Objection #4OBJECTION #4: Anarchism must ultimately lead to violence, to a war of all against all. Without some institution to define the rules of social life and enforce those rules, there will be chaos. ANSWER: This objection rests upon a basic but always recurring fallacy--the notion that men are by nature anti-social and anti-cooperative. And just as wrongly, it proposes government as the solution to man's supposed inclination to destroy or injure all of his fellow humans. This is a positively absurd concept of man's nature and is topped only by the even more absurd faith government preachers have in an assumed benevolent nature of government.
Whereas ordinary people will normally rank interpersonal violence as a last resort of social breakdown or crisis, government operates with violence as its immediate priority; determined course of action are decreed, not voluntarily decided upon; ordered, not freely accepted. If the principle of government were extended consistently and uniformly throughout society, true chaos would result--every civilized relationship would give way to the gun or knife; force, not persuasion. We have only the principle of Anarchy operating--the principle of no compulsion--to thank for the fact that the present social condition is not as faulty as it might be. Numerous social interactions even today still take place with an absence of compulsion, although State-ordained procedures are of course increasing daily. In the remaining spontaneous relationships between persons there is no ubiquitous policeman interceding (yet); nonetheless, most transactions, conversations, even quarrels, are accomplished without resort to coercion. Government's standard operating procedure is to use coercion first and discuss matters afterward: "Under penalty of three years in the federal penitentiary or $10,000 fine, or both, you are herewith required to.." etc. This reversal of proper order, and exaggerated tendency to resort to force, is completely typical of governments; the tendency to place social compulsion uppermost is certainly not natural or justified. It should be noted that even those people who defend government get along fine without it in their relations with friends or neighbors, most of the time, and would think a person rude, insulting, and violent who behaved privately as governments do publicly. Without government and the power government has to deliver a regimented "justice," people would have no effective or sustained means of dominating their neighbors. Without government they would have to deal with each other as equals and use persuasion and compromise as the basic tools of their social relationships. But with government, they can short-circuit all the natural social bonds people create to peacefully settle problems. They don't need to persuade; they can club you into submission. They don't need to deal with you directly, they can manipulate a third party to do their bullying for them. Neighbors are driven apart by government. When there is force involved, the ties developed by natural society are crushed. Left to themselves, people will develop their own rules of social life. These rules need not be uniform in all places, and there need be no one special method of enforcing them. People will naturally find their own solutions to problems and their own ways of establishing and defining the rules of their social life. As anarchists we do not dictate what social institutions will be used to deal with crime. People will have to discover them for themselves. It's not anarchism that breeds chaos. To government belongs that responsibility. It is not the anarchists who are the violent members of society--it's the government rulers that hold that distinction. ✳ ✳ ✳ |